STAR TREK: "IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY?" (1968)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *good*

FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *cosmological, psychological*

Who says that fictions only and false hair 

Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty? 

Is all good structure in a winding stair? 

May no lines pass, except they do their duty 

Not to a true, but painted chair? -- George Herbert, JORDAN.

MIRANDA: O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in't! 
PROSPERO: 'Tis new to thee.

I don't imagine "Truth" makes very many "top-ten Classic Trek" lists. Like the first-season "Conscience of the King," "Truth" is largely a drama about internal conflict, with only a few gestures toward external peril for the crew of the Enterprise. Yet the story ought to be resonably popular with feminists, however, since it's one of the few TREK scripts in which a woman enjoys an independence from men-- or at least, men of the human species.

At the episode's opening, a Shatner voiceover informs the viewer that the ship is transporting a unique ambassador back home after what one presumes are some ambassadorial duties. Kollos-- whose name bears a striking resemblance to "kalos," the archaic Greek word for beauty-- belongs to a race that has evolved into a formless state. This formlessness is just as shocking to humans of the future as lack of proper form was to the ancient Greeks, and in accordance these aliens have been dubbed "Medusans," since Medusa had the power to petrify with her ugliness. Kollos can only travel inside a container that may remind one of anything from the Ark of the Covenant to the box of Pandora, and even when the container's being beamed onto the Enterprise, humans cannot be present, apparently since they might catch sight of the Medusan in his atomized state. Only Spock can be present when Kollos comes on board, and even the half-human Vulcan must wear a visor to cover his eyes and dull any possible exposure to the ambassador.

But Kollos does not come alone. As Medusans are the galaxy's pre-eminent masters of space navigation, there are plans to retrofit starships in order to incorporate Medusan insights. Kollos is preceded by Larry Marvik, a technician who worked on designing the Enterprise, and when the Medusan comes on board, the creature is accompanied by a human doctor of psychology, Miranda Jones. (A quotation from Shakespeare's TEMPEST later in the episode attests to the writer's main reason for choosing the name "Miranda," beyond its base meaning of "worthy of admiration.') This Miranda, though, is part of the Federation hierarchy rather than an unschooled innocent. The navigation-project can only be implemented if a humanoid can form a "mind-link" with a Medusan like Kollos.

Though Spock and Miranda work in tandem to bring the dangerous Medusan to his ship-quarters, Miranda reveals her awareness that Spock was invited to assume the role intended for he. Spock observes her barely concealed jealousy, even as she fails to glean his true feelings for the project by using her birth-given telepathic gifts.

While Kollos resides in his container, Miranda and Marvik are feted by the ship's senior officers: Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scott. McCoy rather than Kirk takes on the role of the somewhat paternalistic male who cannot understand a beautiful woman binding herself to a creature of reputed ugliness. Miranda aptly refutes him, and Spock dismisses the "outmoded notion, promulgated by your ancient Greeks, that what is good must also be beautiful." The polite badinage gives way to alarm when Miranda claims that she perceives someone in the room contemplating murder. She leaves, with McCoy remarking that he finds her both "vulnerable" and "disturbing."

Marvik appears at Miranda's quarters, importuning her to bind herself to him rather than to Kollos. As on previous occasions, Miranda rejects his suit, and he makes a not-unfamiliar attempt to denigrate her for her unwomanly status as "the great psychologist," saying. "Why don't you try being a woman?" Miranda is less concerned with his gender politics than with the discovery that Marvik is the source of the murderous thoughts she sensed. He leaves, and attempts to use a phaser on Ambassador Kollos. The Medusan exposes his unknowable nature to the scientist, who is promptly infected with a growing madness. Unfortunately for the Enterprise, the mania doesn't consume Marvik before he sets the ship he designed on a wild ride into an unfamiliar continuum. Then Marvik perishes, cursing Miranda for the insidious allure of her beauty.

The senior officers soon determine that the only way to navigate their way back to their galaxy is to form a mind-link between Spock and Kollos. Though Kirk has the right to initiate this procedure, he seems curiously unwilling to lock horns with Miranda, who guards Kollos jealously. Kirk invites Miranda to an arboretum, and if he isn't trying to seduce her as such, he does seek to sway her from her chosen path, telling her she ought to seek the bliss of marriage. Miranda will have none of it. In her early years she experienced great torments from being telepathically vulnerable to the chaos of other minds, and now that training on Vulcan has given her some measure of protection, she wants only to become a figurative "bride of Kollos" rather than being a part of the brawling human race. She also sees through Kirk's charade and tries to prevent Spock's appeal to Kollos. McCoy, who has apparently had time at some point to learn her full medical history, reveals that she is ill-equipped to perform the navigation because Miranda is literally blind, and that her appearance otherwise has been feigned with the use of technology. Miranda is then obliged to ask Kollos to choose whom he will mind-link. Kollos chooses Spock and Miranda's equanimity is shattered as she screams in frustration.

The mind-link results in a "double entity" that is essentially Kollos' mind in Spock's body. The merged being easily returns the ship to normal space, but when Spock goes to rejoin Kollos' mind to the Medusan's formless body, he forgets to don the visor, and goes insane.

The culmination of the psychological conflict then takes center-stage. Spock is in danger of dying as Marvik did, and Miranda claims she cannot help him with her telepathic talents. Kirk, desperate to save Spock, reasons that Miranda subconsciously wants her rival dead. He badgers her, accusing her of having subliminally influenced Spock, of desiring his death. However, nothing motivates Miranda more than Kirk's insight that "you can't lie to Kollos." Whether or not Miranda conspired to cause Spock's death remains unknown, but she knows that she must exert herself to the utmost in saving Spock, or Kollos will know of it. The result is that the two rivals undergo what might be called a sci-fi version of a Jungian katabasis, journeying into the realm of death before coming out alive.

The ending shows a different Miranda, no longer prickly or harried by her personal demons. The broad implication is that she has entered a new communion with Kollos, and purged herself of all the "violent passions" that she held in her own heart, making it possible for her to join the alien in his world.

A likely reason as to why the lead female of "Truth" is not embroiled in any passionate connection is that she is, in essence, a science-fiction version of a nun, turning away from ordinary life to pursue a higher calling. The poet Herbert asks his readers why they cannot find beauty in common, ordinary "true" things, rather than the elaborations of "the winding stair." But the writer of "Truth" uses Herbert to elaborate the opposite meaning: Miranda does turn away from ordinary life in favor of binding herself to a complex and inhuman being. For that matter, the script also reverses the fate of Miranda's namesake. The heroine of THE TEMPEST goes from a fairy-tale existence to the world of real life, and Miranda takes the opposite course. Indeed, in the colloquy she has with the joined Kollos-Spock, it is he who speaks the optimistic "brave new world" line, while Miranda utters Prospero's more cynical observation, "'Tis new to thee." After that, Kollos-Spock's last word on the subject is that she will soon enter his world in place of the one she knows-- and this, as the script presents things, is right and proper, but only once she has followed the precepts of Vulcan philosophy, purging herself of her lesser impulses.